everything flows » stephen harper

Launch of ReallyNotALeader.ca

Luke Rodgers — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 02:49:24 +0000

I began work on this site late last week, and am launching it today, with a bit less content than I had hoped, but with a decent start.

Stephen Harper is REALLY not a leader

ReallyNotALeader aims to make plain the many ways in which Stephen Harper fails to live up to his own rhetoric: the central premise of this blog is that Canada deserves better a better leader than Stephen Harper. With this blog, I hope contribute to the efforts of many Canadians to raise the bar of professionalism for political debate and campaigning.

Reason 2 not to elect the Conservatives: stupid and destructive climate change policy

Luke Rodgers — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 01:55:15 +0000

After they were done pointing the finger at Paul Martin’s LIberals for dropping the ball on Kyoto (which, though a reasonable accusation, is ridiculous coming from Stephen Harper or John Baird) and had finally caved to public pressure on addressing environmental issues and human-caused global warming, the Conservatives have come out with a set of policies and proposals to address climate change that can only be described as stupid, myopic and dangerous.

As the Sierra Club of Canada’s recently published Voter’s Guide to the Climate Crisis Election makes plain, the Conservatives are flying in the face of science. Ignoring the IPCC recommendation that “developed countries reduce their emissions 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020″, the Conservatives instead aim to achieve 3% below 1990 levels by 2020.

Don’t bother looking for the science behind these numbers — there isn’t any. The Conservatives are wilfully ignoring the consensus of the world’s most qualified experts and playing fast and loose with the future of Canada and the planet at large. And, I have to ask, since when is it a strategy of a right-wing party to advocate for more regulation? I thought Government was supposed to let the markets sort things out for themselves, as would be more the case in, say, a carbon tax like that proposed by the Liberals and Greens.

McDonough and Braumgart write in Cradle to Cradle, “negligence starts tomorrow.” Well, for the federal Conservatives and Canada at large, negligence has already begun, and will continue on October 14th if we vote them in again.

Reason 1 not to elect the Conservatives: trashy campaigning

Luke Rodgers — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 10:01:50 +0000

As this Reuters article notes, Stephen Harper today found himself apologizing for a Conservative attack-ad website (notaleader.ca – I’m not going to give it my link juice) on Liberal leader Stéphane Dion in which a Puffin flies behind Dion and poops on his shoulder (in the revised version, the puffin just flies behind Dion).

Way to raise the professionalism bar, guys.

Seriously though, does the Conservative campaign against Dion not remind anyone else of the Republicans’ “flip-flop” attack campaign against John Kerry that (successfully) distracted the stupefied public from real issues? I can’t be the only one who’s worried by the Americanization of Canadian politics that is leaching in through the Conservative party.